Comment by qsort

Comment by qsort 3 days ago

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> Important: there is a lot of human coding, too.

I'm not highlighting this to gloat or to prove a point. If anything in the past I have underestimated how big LLMs were going to be. Anyone so inclined can take the chance to point and laugh at how stupid and wrong that was. Done? Great.

I don't think I've been intentionally avoiding coding assistants and as a matter of fact I have been using Claude Code since the literal day it first previewed, and yet it doesn't feel, not even one bit, that you can take your hands off the wheel. Many are acting as if writing any code manually means "you're holding it wrong", which I feel it's just not true.

simonw 3 days ago

Yeah, my current opinion on this is that AI tools make development harder work. You can get big productivity boosts out of them but you have to be working at the top of your game - I often find I'm mentally exhausted after just a couple of hours.

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  • dotinvoke 3 days ago

    My experience with AI tools is the opposite. The biggest energy thieves for me are configuration issues, library quirks, or trivial mistakes that are hard to spot. With AI I can often just bulldoze past those things and spend more time on tangible results.

    When using it for code or architecture or design, I’m always watching for signs that it is going off the rails. Then I usually write code myself for a while, to keep the structure and key details of whatever I’m doing correct.

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    • troupo 3 days ago

      For me, LLMs always, without fail get important details wrong.

      - incessantly duplicating already existing functionality: utility functions, UI components etc.

      - skipping required parameters like passing current user/actor to DB-related functions

      - completely ignoring large and small chunks of existing UI and UI-related functionality like layouts or existing styles

      - using ad-hoc DB queries or even iterating over full datasets in memory instead of setting up proper DB queries

      And so on and so forth.

      YYMV of course depending on language and project

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      • simonw 3 days ago

        Sounds to me like you'd benefit from providing detailed instructions to LLMs about how they should avoid duplicating functionality (which means documenting the functionality they should be aware of), what kind of parameters are always required, setting up "proper DB queries" etc.

        ... which is exactly the kind of thing this new skills mechanism is designed to solve.

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        • troupo 2 days ago

          > Sounds to me like you'd benefit from providing detailed instructions to LLMs about how they should avoid duplicating functionality

          That they routinely ignore.

          > which means documenting the functionality they should be aware of

          Which means spending inordinate amounts of time writing down about every single function and component and css and style which can otherwise be easily discovered by just searching. Or by looking at adjacent files.

          > which is exactly the kind of thing this new skills mechanism is designed to solve.

          I tried it yesterday. It immediately duplicated functionality, ignored existing styles and components, and created ad-hoc queries. It did feel like there were fewer times when it did that, but it's hard to quantify.

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  • james_marks 3 days ago

    100%. It’s like managing an employee that always turns their work in 30 seconds later; you never get a break.

    I also have to remember all of the new code that’s coming together, and keep it from re-inventing other parts of the codebase, etc.

    More productive, but hard work.

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  • sawmurai 3 days ago

    I have a similar experience. It feels like riding your bike in a higher gear - you can go faster but it will take more effort and you need the potential (stronger legs) to make use of it

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    • specproc 3 days ago

      It's more like shifting from a normal to an electric bike.

      You can go further and faster, but you can get to a point where you're out of juice miles from home, and getting back is a chuffing nightmare.

      Also, you discover that you're putting on weight and not getting that same buzz you got on your old pushbike.

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      • truetraveller 3 days ago

        Hey, that's a great analogy, 10/10! This explains in a few words what an entire article might explain.

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  • jstummbillig 3 days ago

    Considering the last 2 years, has it become harder or easier?

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    • simonw 3 days ago

      Definitely harder.

      A year ago I was using GitHub Copilot autocomplete in VS Code and occasionally asking ChatGPT or Claude to help write me a short function or two.

      Today I have Claude Code and Codex CLI and Codex Web running, often in parallel, hunting down and resolving bugs and proposing system designs and collaborating with me on detailed specs and then turning those specs into working code with passing tests.

      The cognitive overhead today is far higher than it was a year ago.

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      • dingdingdang 3 days ago

        Also better and faster though!! It's close to a Daft Punk type situation.

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  • truetraveller 3 days ago

    Woah, that's huge coming from you. This comment itself is worth an article. Do it. Call it "AI tools make development harder work".

    P.s. always thought you were one of those irrational AI bros. Later, found that you were super reasonable. That's the way it should be. And thank you!

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Pannoniae 3 days ago

In fact, I've been writing more code myself since these tools exist - maybe I'm not a real developer but in the past I might have tried to either find a library online or try to find something on the internet to copypaste and adapt, nowadays I give it a shot myself with Claude.

For context, I mainly do game development so I'm viewing it through that lens - but I find it easier to debug something bad than to write it from scratch. It's more intensive than doing it yourself but probably more productive too.

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scuff3d 3 days ago

> Many are acting as if writing any code manually means "you're holding it wrong", which I feel it's just not true.

It's funny because not far below this comment there is someone doing literally this.

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